Success Is Right Outside Of Your Comfort Zone

by Nicole Munoz

Have you ever been faced with making decisions for your business and you just weren’t sure about what the right decision was?

Or, maybe, you weren’t sure about the risk that was involved?

Or you couldn’t tell if it was going to pan out or not?

We’ve all been there. But, when this happens, it paralyzes you from making a decision. And when you don’t make a decision, then it’s the same as saying no, the same as not going forward.

Have you ever been in a place in your business where you were in a low place and you found yourself wondering if you could even make payroll for the six or seven people on staff?

Have you had that feeling in your stomach where you wonder if you’re really going to be able to make this work?

Have you ever tried to launch your own product or course, putting something out there and, after the work, you get no responses?

You’ve spent hours and hours creating an offer, building templates, and recording a video series, and you’re convinced it’s going to be amazing. It’s really going to help people! But, then, you put it out there and nobody wants it. Nobody opts in.

If you do… then this is for you!

Maybe you spent six months building this amazing funnel because everyone tells you that you need to have this amazing automation funnel to get people to buy your stuff.

And if you only have a perfect funnel, then you’re going to be able to be successful. So, you spend six months building it and when you launch it…crickets.

There’s nothing. No one buys. Now you’re feeling like a failure. You wonder…

“Will this ever work out for me? Am I ever going to figure this out?”

You get scared and you begin to doubt if you’re ever going to be successful.

There’s a saying that goes, “Success is right outside of your comfort zone.”

A few years ago, I was focused on scaling my business. So I did what most business owners do. I started to look around at what everyone else was doing so I could copy… oh, wait, I mean emulate them….

As I looked at the things they were doing in their business, I’d think to myself…

“But, I really don’t want to shoot videos. I really don’t think I want to do a podcast. I don’t think I could write a book. I don’t think I can do what they’re doing. So, I’m going to try to find the 98 other ways of doing it without doing those things because those things are outside of my comfort zone. Those things seem a little bit hard and not something I want to do.”

I decided that it might be time to start listening to my mentors. After all, I didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. I tried to figure out what I could do to try to push myself to live outside of my comfort zone. So, I found this little trick that helps me, and I’d like to share it with you.

I recently had a feeling, again, working on something with one of my coaches. They challenged me to make a decision in my business. They could see that I was sort of resistant. So, they asked how I was feeling. I said, “Well, it’s kind of like the time I jumped off a cliff.” It felt kind of scary… but it feels good. It feels like this is outside of my comfort zone and this is the direction I want to go to. So, just because I don’t feel safe and secure, that doesn’t mean it’s not the right decision. It doesn’t mean I can’t go forward with it because success is always just outside of my comfort zone.

I remember when we first started getting involved with online marketing in 2002. I showed my husband a program for $50 about how to start a Yahoo Store, an e-commerce business. Back then, $50 for us felt like the world. It felt like a huge investment because we did not have extra money for anything. We barely had enough money to eat. When we first went to Mexico, I actually taught English classes for fifty cents. I had five students and from those five students, I earned $2.50. We took that money and bought eggs and tortillas. It was basically the money we used to buy food with that day. So, spending $50 in 2002 was huge.

One of the objections we had to investing the $50 course is that we did not know if it was going to work or not. We decided that even if it never made any money, it could be a hobby – something to do to pass the time to learn something new. And it worked out really well. As I was running the e-commerce business, the person from the program sent me an email selling me another program for $297.

Making the decision to invest $297 was easier. First, we had money from the business to invest and we were no longer just surviving. We had put into action the things we learned in the $50 program and we were making $3,000 a month. They said that somebody else who bought the same course as I did, at about the same time that I did are now doing $10,000 – $50,000 a month. But they had a strategic advantage. They knew how to do something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And the two of them got together and created a course on how he did it and, for $297, they would teach me everything I needed to know about how to get to the top of the search engines.

And so I had a discussion with my husband and my dad, going over whether we should invest $297 in this new course. The consensus that came back was that since it worked out the first time with the $50 book and now you make $3,000 a month, why not go ahead and buy this for $297 and we’ll see how that goes. If it worked out the first time, it’s going to work out the second time, as well.

So, I did that. We invested $297 and we took it very seriously. That was a lot of money for us. It still is today.

I started putting everything into practice. I learned Search Engine Optimization and we were able to grow our business from $3,000 a month to $30,000 a month. But, since this is an e-commerce business, most of the money goes into paying for the products. The profit margin is actually quite thin, but we’re still making money.

In 2006, I got another email from the same people from the course saying that they’ve now put together this membership site to get training from top people and access to four live events a year. It sounded great!

The $50 investment turned out great, the $297 investment turned out great, so I had a feeling this next step would be the right decision, too. Then, I looked at the price of this one. It jumped from a one time payment of $297 to $9,600 each year. At the time, that was more than two years of my college education. And, to make the decision even more difficult, the launch date for this program was the exact same date as when my twins were due. As these thoughts crossed my mind, I started to feel heavy with all of the reasons why this program wouldn’t work. My husband and I had three kids with twins on the way — this is not something I would have time for!

So, the product launched and I chose to not buy it. Three months later in January, I had five kids ages five years old and under. I got an email from someone that I had purchased a software tool from for SEO, who was an affiliate of this membership site—someone who promotes the products and services, and when you make a purchase from them, they get a commission as a referral fee.

He said that he was going to be an affiliate for the membership site and they’ve offered to invite people to come in through him since it was already closed. I thought I had things down with my kids, so I had another talk with my husband and my dad and asked them what they thought about it. It’s a big decision. Again, the consensus that came back was that since it worked out the first time and the second time, why not buy it for just one month and see how it goes.

We ended up getting the program for $9,600 a year and we actually stayed in that program for three years as a paid member. And, let me tell you, that was one of the single best business decisions I have made in my life because it is responsible for most of the things that have helped me in my career today. The things that I learned in those three years in the membership program are the things that I still use in my business today.

For example, one of the very first things that I learned in that program was that if I can pay someone else $5 an hour to do something and I choose to do it instead, then I’m the one making $5 an hour. It rang true to me! Why would I do $5 an hour work if I can hire someone? So, I did. That person ended up being with me for over 10 years helping me in my business. Just little things like that which you don’t see as an entrepreneur.

They sold the program with the idea that they would teach me how to get better rankings in the search engines… but they didn’t give me just that. They gave me the confidence that I needed and the mindset required to succeed. They connected me to a community of entrepreneurs. In one phone call, they helped me to grow my business five times over. Five times! This is all from one phone call and from one person who I met in that group. And that phone call didn’t cost me anything.

You never know where things are going to lead, which is why it’s so important to be willing to take a risk. You have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone, to go forward in your business. Make that investment in yourself so that you can grow your business to have an amazing next year!

There Is Always A Way To Figure It Out

by Nicole Munoz

There’s always a way to figure out anything you want to do. Once you know what you want to achieve, you just have to work backwards to figure out the HOW.

Have you ever attended a marketing conference? I’ve been to so many I’ve lost count! My husband and I started going to marketing conferences back in 2006.

If you have ever attended a live event, you know that it takes a lot of work to get there. You have to buy plane tickets, take time off work, figure out babysitting arrangements… there are a lot of logistics to juggle.

But, when you finally get to the live event, you’re pumped. And when you finally get into that seat, you’re beyond excited.

Take a time to watch this video…

It’s time to learn how to grow your business!

Have you ever been sitting there, listening to the speakers, to all the people you’ve invested so much time and money to hear speak, and thought to yourself, “Well, that’s great… but I don’t think that applies to me.”

If not, let me tell you, it’s not a great feeling. After going to so much work and paying so much money, the last thing you want to do is walk away from a conference feeling like the lessons didn’t apply to you.

I went to a conference once with my mom, a very successful realtor in Southern California. (I always like to travel with somebody.) We were sitting in the second row, right in the middle, which meant that the speaker was right in front of us.

He was speaking about a very important topic for business owners:

#1. How To Build An Email List

#2. Why It’s Important To Have A List

#3. The Different Ways You Can Use An Email List

#4. How You Can Capture Your Leads

#5. How You Can Send Out An Offer And Have People Opt- in

#6. How To Build A Funnel, And On And On

While the speaker was talking, my mom started searching around for something in her purse. Maybe she was looking for a pen to take notes?

Nope! She pulled out a Better Homes and Garden Magazine. She opened it up and started flipping through it while the speaker – my mentor! – was right there on stage.

I quietly told my mom to put the magazine away and she asked me why. I told her she needed to pay attention to the speaker. She responded, “No, I don’t. This doesn’t apply to me. I sell houses.”

But, it did apply to her! She just didn’t realize how it could.

And this is a situation that so many of us find ourselves in at one time or another. We can be listening to something, a topic that could be a perfect fit for our business, something that could help us tremendously, but we don’t see how it applies — at least, not yet.

In order to be successful:

You need to retrain your mind.
Instead of jumping to the conclusion that something doesn’t apply to your business, try switching your mindset.
Instead, ask yourself how you can make it work for you and your business.
How can you take some of the steps and principles and apply them to your business, even if you have to alter them just a little bit?

In our e-commerce store, we used a drop shipper, a company that buys products from different types of companies and holds them in their warehouse. When you work with them, they give you an excel file of all the different products they offer with wholesale prices. You’re then able to take those products, list them on your website, and sell them at retail prices.

When you get a sale, you tell the drop shipper to send the product to your customer and ship it with your name on it, as if it came directly from you. It’s a fantastic way for you to build an e-commerce store without actually having to invest in inventory.

Within the first month of opening our e-commerce business, we started selling about $3,000 per month. As we grew, I started to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A few months later, we were #1 on Google for every single one of the keywords we were targeting. Our sales went up to $30,000 a month!

I remember staying up way into the middle of the night trying to process orders because the drop shipper didn’t have all of the products. I was sending emails to customers to tell them their orders were out of stock and would offer an alternative. I manually emailed every single person because I didn’t want to lose a single order that we had received.

One day we got an order for 500 cooler hinges. That may not seem like a big deal, but back then the hinges cost me about a dollar and I sold them for $12. That was a lot of money for that one order. But I had a problem. My drop shipper only had 12 in stock, and I needed 500! I didn’t know what I was going to do. Maybe I can just buy direct from the manufacturer? But, where am I going to ship it to? Most manufacturers won’t ship directly to a consumer. Remember, this was all pre-Amazon fulfillment centers!

Desperate for a solution, I called up the manufacturer and asked if I could set up a wholesale account and what the minimum order requirement was. They said the minimum was $500 and they connected me with Ray in the sales department. I told him I needed 500 hinges. He sent me a few forms to fill out and asked me where I would like the hinges to be shipped to. That was the easy part. I then called my dad, who at the time was a VP of a credit union, and asked him if he’d be able to help me ship out a few items, 500 cooler hinges to be exact. Thankfully, he said yes!

The manufacturer shipped the order to my dad’s house and he re-shipped them to the customer. We made a huge profit! We were so excited. And after seeing how well this worked out, I asked my dad if he would like to help me a little bit more. So, we started to order more items directly from the manufacturer and had them sent to my dad’s house in California.

At one point, it wasn’t just a couple of boxes showing up on my dad’s front porch. There were pallets — pallets and pallets of stuff!

My dad did this for us for a few months. He worked his full time job Monday to Friday and then spent his nights and weekends printing out orders, packing goods, and shipping products. He created a system that made it all work. But, after a while of pulling 60+ hour weeks between his day job and his volunteer work for my company, we decided to hire a family member to stock and ship the inventory full time. They worked with us for several years until we outgrew their garage and had to get a warehouse!

Finally, when Amazon Fulfillment came around, we started moving our inventory to an Amazon Fulfillment Center, which made our lives so much easier. If you don’t know how Amazon Fulfillment Centers work, you basically can order products from anywhere in the world, have them shipped directly to an Amazon Fulfillment Center (which works like a drop shipping company), and have the orders sent out from there. You don’t ever have to touch them!

Whatever your situation is today, you have more going for you today than I had back when we started our business with dial up from Mexico. But, even with so many obstacles in our way, we were able to build a six figure business in a very short amount of time. How? We kept our mindsets focused on answering the question, “How can I make this work for me?”

Despite your situation and circumstances, you can always solve any problem.

Sometimes you’ll have to think outside of the box,
Leaning into a little bit of creativity.
But this is how you become successful: You know there’s always a way to figure it out.

If They Can Do It, You Can Too!

by ArturoMunoz

Most people don’t understand how I got started in online marketing. As a missionary in Mexico, people seem to think that the two don’t go together. In reality…

I never planned on becoming an internet marketer.
I did not study marketing in college
I never planned to do anything else but be a missionary wife.

But in 2002, while I was on bed rest with our second child (we have 7 kids now)…

I stumbled across an ebook called, “How to Start a Yahoo Store.” The book was about how anyone could start an ecommerce business online without actually having to invest thousands of dollars in products. The e-book cost $50 and, at that time, that was a huge amount of money for us, especially for a book. But then I thought to myself…

“If I could just make an extra $200 a month that would be amazing.

I would be able to go to Starbucks whenever I wanted.

I would be able to buy a dress every now and then.

I’d be able to give to our church when needs came up.

Plus, I’d have a little something to do right now to pass the time while I’m stuck in bed!”

So, I bought this seemingly expensive e-book, “How to Start a Yahoo Store” by Andy Jenkins. While reading, I kept focusing on one thing in particular, and it kept showing up again and again. By the end of the book, my major takeaway was…

“Wow! This guy really doesn’t know how to spell.”

The entire book, from front to back, was filled with spelling errors. Of course, I managed to overlook the misspellings, focusing on the author’s explanation of how to get started with an online store.

One of the things he said to do was to create an excel file with all of the information about your products, making it easier to upload the products to your website in bulk. At the time, I didn’t even know what an excel file was! I went to Bible College in a pre-digital world! Only one young man in our entire school even had a laptop back then!

He went on to say that you get the products you sell from people or companies called “dropshippers.” These dropshippers buy products in bulk and then store them in their warehouse, but they don’t directly sell them to consumers. Instead, they allow their resellers to put the products on their websites, making money on the large orders and the small margin of markup. This is how, it turns out, you can sell other people’s products without investing in any inventory, which means no monetary investment up front.

As I was learning all of these things from this e-book, I was definitely a little intimidated. The e-book was very long, detailing everything you needed to know about how to run a successful online business. It also included the author’s story about how he successfully built his own business.

Of course, as I read about his 8 successes, all I could think was, “Man, if this guy, who doesn’t even know how to spell, can launch a successful e-commerce store, well then I definitely can. It’s not rocket science.”

I was so inspired by him that my husband and I launched our first e-commerce site in 2002. Almost immediately, we started generating about $3,000 a month in sales, which was a huge amount to me at the time. Needless to say, I very quickly reached my initial goal of earning an extra $200 per month.

At a conference a few years later, I was able to finally meet the author of that e-book, Andy Jenkins. Who, despite the spelling errors in that e-book, is brilliant. I told him the story about how he inspired me. He shared with me that the reason the document had a lot of spelling errors was because he had uploaded the wrong file, not the one he had edited, on the day he launched that course.

What a great example of that saying,

“You don’t have to get it perfect, you just have to get it going.”

In 2002, I was living in a third world country, living in Mexico with dial up Internet. But I kept saying to myself, “If Andy can do it, I can definitely do it, too.” That’s the message I have for you today: “If he can do it, you can, too.”

My question for you is: What’s stopping you today from growing your business or from starting a business?

Nobody Can Take Your Place

by Nicole Munoz

Do you often wonder where somebody would take your place in something that is important to you? Let me share to you a life-changing event I encountered that would make you say…

“Nobody Can Take My Place.”

Take a look at this video we had on our trip to Costa Rica:

After landing in Costa Rica, my husband and I were going through customs when we saw a sign that said, “Nadie Puede Tomar Tu Lugar.” In Spanish, that means, “Nobody Can Take Your Place.”

While the sign really was there just to remind you that “nobody can take your place” because they don’t oversell seats on the airplane, it had a different underlying meaning for me.

When I read that simple sign, I heard, “Nobody Can Take YOUR Place.”

Nobody can take your place as a mother.

No one will ever love your own children like you love them. A motherly love is genuine and truly unique in every Mom out there.

Nobody can take your place as a dad.

No one would ever care like your father does! He will protect you no matter what the circumstances are. He will prioritize everything for his Children!

Nobody can take your place as a son or a daughter

No one can ever appreciate and see a day to day effort your parents gave you! No one could ever feel the love they give as much as every child does with their parents! Nobody could understand how much you aim to have success in order to give back to your dear parents and understand the shortcomings, because for every child, their mom and dad are perfect for them!

Nobody can take your place as a business leader.

No one could ever appreciate the value of being a business leader, as you do! You put effort into your business and make everything work out as they should be!

You have a message that people need to hear. You have something special that you can contribute something that has the potential to change people’s lives.

Just before we left for our trip to Costa Rica, I was having a conversation with a woman, Adriana, at the church, where my husband pastors. The mom of five adorable children, Adriana had been in our church for only six months. While we were speaking, she told me that there’s been a huge change in her life since we’d first met.

At first, I didn’t actually realize just how much of a change she had meant. But, as she went on, it became clear that she was talking about a major life shift.

Adriana told me that before she started coming to church…

She would stay inside all day long.

She slept from morning to night, unable to get up.

She struggled to take care of her kids.

She was extremely depressed.

She told me that everything started changing when she began coming to church. Our church, it turns out, has made her so happy.

Now she is always smiling.

She’s so grateful that her kids got their mom back.

But then she shared with me that she felt guilty about not being able to give to the church. While she wanted to give back, she didn’t have any money.

She also told me how she had just bought bed frames for her kids, but, because she still didn’t have any mattresses, she was just putting the same cardboard she used when her kids slept on the floor on top of the new frames. (I had seen this for myself when I visited her home earlier.) She kept reiterating that she was fine, that at least now the kids would be off the floor!

Here is a woman who doesn’t even have mattresses for her kids to sleep on, and she feels bad about not having money to give to the church!

Even though Adriana isn’t able to contribute to the church financially, she certainly does contribute. She does give! She’s the one who is in the kitchen, cleaning and helping with a smile on her face, whenever she can…

This is what you need to know...

#1. Every single one of us has a place in this world.

#2. We have a unique role

#3. We have specific people we’re meant to reach out to, people that no one else can reach

So, my challenge for you today is to reach out to someone. Help just one person today because the world is waiting for you to step up. No one else can take your place!

I want to help people with their venture to success! I have great news for everyone who wants to be successful in making their businesses great and have a lifestyle business that works for them!

A business, no one could take their place in doing great things that would work for them! I will share with you the most amazing events and ways on building your lifestyle business!

Witness How a Missionary Wife and Mother of 7 Successfully Built Three 6-Figure Businesses!

Where to START

by Nicole Munoz

Are you a sole owner / operator? Have your website, Facebook page, and blog. You love your work and want to reach more people… but don’t know where to start?

An ebook? A workshop? Free consultations?

Are you unsure what direction your first step should be? Are you worried about the complete picture? What you are building? How to sell it? How to find time to work on it? Do you feel like you lack guidance? You know that you are capable and prepared – but you lack confidence on the next few steps to take?

Do you feel like building your business is just… so… slow? Do you struggle with finding the right steps and feel like you’ve wasted so much time trying to figure it out?

You’ve got something called…

You just don’t know where to start!

Guess what! There is a 4-step CURE to STARTERITIS!

Only thing is, it’s a 4-letter word.

I’ts called….

What’s grit?

Well, first off it is not grits. It is not something you eat in the south.

Grit is “perseverance and passion for long-term goals”.

The cure for STARTERITIS is Grit!

#1 Set a Goal.

If you aim for nothing, you will hit it every time. What’s your goal? What is your why? Why do you do what you do?

I’m a member of many groups and I see it all the time. If you are an entrepreneur, you have a deep desire to make a difference. You want your life to matter. You don’t just want to live. You want to leave a legacy.

So figure out your why. Usually the “why” is not about the money. Money is a fleeting goal. It will never be enough. It will never satisfy you. Your goal could be to give back. To help others.

One of my clients has a mission statement. Their goal is to end worldwide divorce.

I love that goal. That is a goal I can stand behind. That is a project that impacts lives. It is not about building a 7-figure business. But the lives that can be impacted through that business.

What’s your goal? What’s your why?

#2 Resilient.

A rubber band is resilient. You can pull on it and stretch it… and it will go right back to its original shape and be ready for more.

Resiliency is about bouncing back.

The test of character is what it takes to stop you.

If someone tells you that your idea is a bad idea and you’ll never make money from it… what do you do? Do you listen to them? Usually someone who has worked a 9-5 their whole life and can’t fathom making over $50/hr? Or do you carefully consider their objections to your biz plan… and then work through them?

When someone asks you for a refund – do you sit there for hours thinking that your program is useless and no one will want to buy it? Or do you refund them… and go on to the next customer?

When you are about 80% done with your program, do you start to look around at all of the competitors … do you stop recording your videos and shelve your project because you tell yourself – what do I have to offer that is ANY different than all those other people?

Bounce back.

#3 – Intense Focus

The problem most people get wrong is they try to do too much at the same time.

Multi-tasking is a myth.

If something takes you 3 weeks to get done and you work on 3 things at the same time…you won’t finish with your first project until Week 7! It will take you longer to get stuff done.

Many, many times we work with clients that serve multiple audiences and therefore want to build multiple funnels at the same time. This does not work.

Success comes when you intensely focus on ONE project at a time. Pick one audience. One offer. One funnel. And go for it.

#4 – Tenacity

Never give up. Failure is part of success. The only way you can truly fail is if you quit. When we first came to Puebla, Mexico as missionaries, it was a whole year before we began to see results from our work. We rented a small building for services. Each week we’d go out and invite people. And every single Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, we’d sit in an empty auditorium waiting for someone to show up. For a year.

But we had a goal. Our goal was to reach the city with the gospel. We had resiliency. We knew that no matter how many times doors were closed on our faces, we had a purpose. We had intense focus. We did not get distracted with doing anything else but the ONE thing we were there for. And we did not give up.

We believed (and still do) that there is always a way to figure it out.

After one year, we did not quit. We moved.

We rented a building in a different neighborhood. We gave out 10,000 flyers on the side of the street. We launched a new “grand opening”. And 32 people showed up.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 𝐈𝐟 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐭, 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭. 𝐏𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐭.

Never give up.

Is it Moral to Make Money?

by Nicole Munoz

If you’ve been in church any amount of time, you’ve heard it quoted:

“Money is the root of all evil!”

But is that what the Bible says? Let’s take a look.

Let’s break that down.

First it says, “the love of money”. So money is not the problem. Loving money is. Why does God care if you love money or not?

Well 1 John 4:8B says: “God is love.” So we first see here that God is love. Our love and what we love is of utmost importance to God because God is love. He loves us and wants our love in return.

Matthew 22:36-40 states that the first and greatest commandment is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”

When we love money more than God, we are not fulfilling the greatest commandment. It is about priorities. God wants to be FIRST in our lives above anything else. Anything short of that is idolatry. Anytime we put something before God, we have an idol in our life that needs to be destroyed.

Next, it states that the “love of money is the root of all evil”. One of my kids asked me if this was truly true the other day. How can murder be caused by the love of money they asked? (Leave it to kids to push you to really study out the Scriptures!)

Unless you’ve grown up on an island without internet or television, you’ve probably seen a few tv shows about police catching the bad guys. When the detectives are talking what do they always say about how to catch the bad guy? …. They say: “Follow the money!”. Why? Because most times, that is what it comes down to. Jealousy, greed, wanting something we have not yet earned. The love of money.

Next, the Bible says that the love of money leads to abandoning our faith. “Which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith…”.

The problem with loving money more than loving God is that it always leads to a decline in your Spiritual walk with God.

What is faith? Faith is believing God. It is salvation. It is trusting God as your personal Savior. And when you get truly saved, you will end up doing a 180. What’s a 180? It’s when you were walking one way… living your life for yourself, living selfishly, living in sin, drinking, doing drugs, going to parties… and then God saves you… and you make a 180 degree turn and start walking the other direction. You start walking TOWARDS God. What does this look like?

Well, I always tell the ladies in our church and our teen Sunday School class – you should want to be part of the 1% Club. The 1% Club is the club that consists of about 1% of Christians that do the 5 main things that keep you right with God.

If you are a Christian and do those 5 things every single day – congrats! You are in the top 1% of Christians in the world. 🙂

The problem with loving money is it stops you from doing those 5 main things. You get up in the morning and have to rush to work, to close a deal, to check your emails… so your Bible reading and prayer life suffers.

You have a conference to attend or a sales meeting that can only happen on Sunday morning at 11am – right in the middle of church service… so you start to miss church – just this one time you tell yourself.

In the Independent Baptist church we have a tradition to go out each Saturday morning and knock on doors and invite people to church. There is nothing in the Bible that says you have to go on Saturday morning to evangelize. But what is true, is that if something is not scheduled, it won’t get done. When you are working 40-60+ hours per week to try to get ahead and grow in your career, it is very easy to justify not scheduling the time to purposefully go out and tell others the Good News – that Jesus died for them and that if they believe in HIM they can have eternal life – and a joyful life now!

The love of money can even pull you out of church completely if you let it. I’ve seen many strong Christians that used to be faithful to church. They’d sit in the front. They’d sing with a smile on their face and joy in their heart. And then they got a job that pulled them out of church on Sunday’s. They always justify it and say… “I’ll be able to tithe more… It’s only for a little while”. That is how the devil works. So subtly.

So can you be rich and love God?

Yes!

There are many examples in the Bible where God blesses His people with financial rewards.

Just look at King David! Some studies show that his net worth easily exceeded $200 billion dollars. But what did he do with all of that money? He gave. He gave materials for the construction and finishing of Jerusalems’s house of prayer.

Then there is King Solomon. It is said that he received $40 billion in gold each year. Solomon also gave back to God. He was pivotal in the construction of the Temple.

You can look at modern day stories as well.

JC Penny who gave between 10-30%. His first store founded in 1902 was called the “Golden Rule Store”.

Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, was a Sunday School teacher and contributed to his church.

Acts 20:35B says: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

When a young person is just getting started out in life and they don’t have anything to their name, this verse is hard to understand. They think, “No… I’d much rather have someone give me something! I’d much rather be on the receiving end!”

When we first came to Mexico as missionaries we lived in Iguala, GRO. We did not have 2 pesos to rub together. 🙂 Literally. One time the guy that sells bottled water came by our apartment. He rides a bike and has about 10-15 jugs of water that he sells door to door. At the time, the water cost 10 pesos (about $1). We asked if he could “fiar en nosotros” … “trust us” for a week until we could pay him! We did not even have enough money for water at times! I’m not complaining – it was the most exciting time of our lives finally being married and serving in Mexico as missionaries!

When someone gave us something – when they bought us pizza for dinner, or invited us out for tacos – we were thrilled! It was such a special treat!

I am so thankful for those people that gave to us in our time of need.

Now that we are in a different financial situation, there are other types of blessings. We are blessed to be able to give. We can buy food to give away to those in need in our church each Sunday. We can take boxes of groceries to a pastor and see his little girls light up with joy when she sees the box of Choco Krispies. We can buy medicine for the families sick in our church. We can sponsor students in our Christian school so that they have an opportunity for a better education and a completely changed life. We can give on a monthly basis towards missionaries in other countries and help support their work.

It truly is more blessed to give than to receive.

And that is what building a business is all about.

It’s not about the money. The money does not matter. What matters is what can be done with the money.

How many people can we help. How many lives can be changed.

It’s all about balance. It’s about priorities. It is about putting God first and letting your business be something that serves you to allow you to serve God… not the other way around.

How to Launch Your First Online Course!

by Nicole Munoz

Are you ready to create a course but don’t know where to start? Follow this simple process and you will get your course done in no time flat!

Step 1: Define your Marketing Position

Ever heard the story that if you have a day to cut down a tree you should spend 7 hours sharpening your ax and one hour cutting down the tree? That is exactly what this step is!

Before getting started creating 300+ power point slides and 20 fillable PDFs, make sure you identify WHO your course is for and what result (transformation) they are going to get or achieve after taking your course. Here are some questions you should be able to answer:

Who is our target audience?
Who is not our audience?
What are their hopes, desires, dreams?
What are their fears, frustrations, & pain points?
What results do they want? What transformation will your course give them?
Who are your competitors?
What have they tried and why hasn’t it worked?
How can you solve the problem better?

Answer these questions in detail and everything else you do will be easier.

Step 2: Map Out Your Modules

The biggest mistake in course creation is trying to teach too much. You are an expert in your area and you have a burning desire to help people so naturally you want to give them all of the information they need to be successful. Unfortunately this is a losing proposition. If you give away too much information and create a 25 hour course, most people will never finish watching all of the videos, and even less will take action.

You can solve this by giving away just enough information to keep it high level, and use weekly live coaching calls to fill in the gaps. (Which can also be recorded, transcribed, and uploaded as bonus content to your members area!)

A good structure I have found, is this:

A course has 6 modules of about one hour each.
Each module has 6 lessons of about 10 minutes each.

That means that a course will have about 6 hours total of content and it will be laid out in an easy to consume format!

What I have found that is also very helpful, is to write out a bullet point for each lesson in a “sales language” format so that I can use those bullet points on the sales page.

Step 3: Write Your Sales Page

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the next step is not to record your course, but to write your sales page. This will help you to further narrow down what you are going to be teaching and make sure that the course you have in mind is actually an appealing offer.

After writing your sales page you can add it to your site, let people know that it is currently closed but they can join the wait list, and start capturing leads. This is a great way to also gauge interest for a course before you go to all the work of building it!

Step 4: Record Your First Module or Pre-Training Material

You don’t make money in draft mode! Get your first module done or pre-training material ready and then get ready to sell! If you are doing this for the first time and will be doing live coaching calls as you move through your course, you are going to be able to customize your training for your students. Each week let them know what you are going to be teaching the next week and ask them what their biggest questions are related to that topic. Guess what! You now have your lessons mapped out for you! Take their questions and incorporate them into your lessons and your content will create itself.

Step 5: Time to Sell

Don’t let that course sit on your virtual shelf too long. Once you have done steps 1-4, get busy selling!

What questions do you have about course creation? Let me know in the comments below!

How LinkedIn Posts Can Change Your Business

by Nicole Munoz

Is LinkedIn part of your social media marketing strategy? It should be.

“But LinkedIn is for posting resumes and looking for jobs,” you may say. Once upon a time that was the case, but that time has passed. The executives at LinkedIn are broadening their horizons, and that’s good news for you.

For a few months now, LinkedIn has been rolling out a new feature on its site to all of its users: the ability to post content. It started with people who qualified as “Influencers” but has recently been expanding, and will continue to expand, to include all users.

So what?

How does that affect you?

It means you have another opportunity to showcase your expertise in your industry by posting educational information that can point traffic to your website. (You may remember from my previous post that traffic is more important than links. If somebody visits your website based on a post you wrote on LinkedIn, you’ve got a potential lead!)

If you’re a consultant, you can flex your business savvy. If you’re an author, you can showcase your talent. If you’re a business owner, you can share your knowledge of the industry. In each case, you have the opportunity to present yourself as an expert and potentially reach new connections on a new platform.

How does that affect your social media marketing?

The ability to post on LinkedIn affects a few aspects of your social media marketing. First of all, it changes the utility of LinkedIn from a primarily networking and recruiting platform to a marketing platform. It will remain a place online to learn more about applicants, but in order to make the most of it, you’ll need to visit the site more often and write unique posts with marketing in mind.

Secondly, it makes all of your employees marketers. If they have a profile that shows they work for your company, then their posts can be marketing tools to point traffic to your company website. Employees have long been a reflection of the companies they work for, now even more so.

Thirdly, it means there is another site that needs unique content for marketing. If you’re keeping tally at home, here are all the social media sites that need to have content created for them:

Company blog
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Google+
Instagram
Pinterest
Podcast
LinkedIn

Before you throw your hands up in the air in frustration, keep this in mind. Each of these sites has a unique audience with different leads who could turn into customers. That should help to keep you motivated and nudge you to write your first LinkedIn post.

How does posting on LinkedIn benefit your business?

We’ve already talked about how LinkedIn has a new audience for you to wow with industry insights and about how it can point traffic to your business website. Those are fantastic benefits in and of themselves. But there’s more, too.

In the past, when someone viewed your profile on LinkedIn, they would see your background experience first. Now, your posts appear at the top of the profile. That means your industry insights are seen before your resume is. It’s more relatable and valuable in the long run. Just because somebody holds a certain title does not mean they are good at what they do. By providing first-hand industry knowledge, your posts give you the opportunity to show people how your business and expertise can help them.

For example, if you’re a consultant who specializes in employee relations, a resume that shows your years in human resources at a hospital will be less helpful for your business than a post about successfully dealing with conflict in the workplace.

Unlike other social media sites, LinkedIn automatically shows you the publishing metrics for your posts. In other words, the site tells you how many people looked at your post. Knowing what people want to read is incredibly helpful as you plan what to write in the future.

7 Tips for posting on LinkedIn

Use an image at the beginning of the post. An image captures attention at a glance and makes the reader want to know more… or least read to title to see if they want to know more.
Beware of duplicate content. If you’re already thinking to yourself, “I’ll just post stuff I’ve written on my blog to my LinkedIn profile” you’ll need to come up with a new plan. Duplicate content like that actually hurts your website when it comes to search engine rankings. Unique content is your best bet.
LinkedIn has explicitly stated that no sales oriented content will be allowed. Just like search engines want to provide the best results, LinkedIn wants to provide the best reader experience. That, and they want to make the most of paid advertising opportunities.
Include calls to action. You can’t post sales content, but you can tell readers to check out your company website where they’ll learn all about your products and services. The call to action can also be to encourage readers to read a specific blog post on your company site. Remember: the goal is qualified traffic that will become leads.
Business hours are the best time to publish. Unlike other social media sites that tend to focus more on entertainment, LinkedIn’s focus is business. As a result, your posts are more likely to be read if they’re posted during business hours.
Keep your audience in mind while you write. LinkedIn has a different audience than Twitter or YouTube. Focus on industry insights rather than pop culture gossip.
Keep your profile up to date. Even though your posts are at the top of the profile, inquiring minds will want to know more about the author of the post. Make sure your information is current.

Don’t think of LinkedIn as another item on your to-do list; think of it as another opportunity to find leads. If you need some help, let us know.

How To Use One Idea On Multiple Sites Without Duplicate Content: Social Media Mash-Ups

by Nicole Munoz

Effective marketing requires more and more content as different platforms become available. It can exhaust your creativity and monopolize your time. As a small business owner, you can’t afford the overhead required to hire a full time team of marketers to cover all the bases. What can you do?

“Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.”

You’ve heard the old saying, but what does that look like for you and your content creation? You know that duplicate content hurts your website in the eyes of the search engines, so you’ve been struggling to create unique content for all of your social media platforms. As a result, you find yourself stretched thin and having to choose between taking care of your current customers and finding new leads via social media.

Sound familiar?

You need to develop some social media marketing mash-ups!

What’s a Mash-up?

Mash-ups are when a musician blends two or more different songs together to create something new. Perhaps you’ve heard a DJ do a mash-up at a wedding or seen it on a movie like Pitch Perfect. The musicians are using what’s already been created to make something else.

Let me explain. We’ll begin with something fairly simple: a blog post.

Starting With a Blog Post

You’ve written a great blog post and put it on the company website. Is that all you can do with it? The answer is no. You can share that post on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Google+ to reach a wider audience. Did you include an image with the post? (Pro tip: that’s definitely a best practice for blogging.) Pin it to a relevant board on your Pinterest account.

Let’s take it a step further. Can you think of a way to use that same content in a video? If you had to give a presentation with that content, what would it look like? Could you do the same presentation in front of a camera and post it to your YouTube channel? The MOZ Blog has perfected this idea with their Whiteboard Friday posts.

Recapping. You wrote one high quality blog post, shared it on five social media sites and used it as the basis for a new video. You’re starting to get the hang of mash-ups.

Starting With a Podcast

Let’s try another one. This time we’ll start with a podcast. Maybe you prefer talking to writing, so podcasts are less time-consuming for you. Great. Let’s work with that. After you record the podcast and upload it, what else can you do with it to get it to a broader audience?

You can link to it on Facebook and Twitter with a catchy introduction that fits with your audience there. You could have the content of the podcast transcribed and edited so you can post it on your LinkedIn profile. If the content lends itself to illustration, it could be transformed into an Infographic and posted on Instagram or Pinterest. What if, while you recorded the podcast, somebody on your team shot a video of you talking? Now you’ve got a YouTube video, too.

Recapping. You started with the content for a podcast, linked to it on two social media sites, created an Infographic for a third site, posted the transcript on LinkedIn and uploaded a video to YouTube.

Are you beginning to see how this kind of thinking can help you to maximize one great idea by using it on multiple platforms?

One more example before we move on to some pro tips.

Starting With a Webinar

This time we’re going to start with the content you’ve created for a webinar. You’ve created the content for the webinar as a free resource for those who filled out an opt-in form on your website. (Good thinking!)

In preparation for the webinar, you put the content into a PowerPoint presentation. You’ve also decided to use your Google+ account and hold the webinar as a Google hangout to keep the cost down and make it as easy as possible for your attendees. By recording the hangout, you are automatically producing a video you can post on YouTube later.

As a bonus, you can use any good questions your attendees ask as the basis for future content creation. After the webinar, you decide to upload the PowerPoint presentation to SlideShare in hopes of directing more traffic to your site.

Recapping. You prepared for one webinar, added to your email list with opt-ins, added connections on Google+, made a video for YouTube, uploaded to SlideShare and came away with ideas for more content. All in all a successful endeavor, wouldn’t you say?

I think you’ve got the hang of mash-ups now. Here are some things to keep in mind as you go.

Pro Tips for Social Media Mash-ups

Don’t just post links on Facebook and Twitter. If you really want to peak interest, use a great quote from the content before you link to it.
Duplicate content hurts your website in the search engine rankings. Refrain from posting the same content on your blog that you post on LinkedIn.
Keep your audience in mind. You may need to tweak some of your content in order to meet your audience of different platforms. The goal is to reach different audiences, but people who read posts on LinkedIn may be different than people who follow you on Pinterest. Mash-up accordingly.
If you don’t have a target audience presence on a certain social media site, focus on other sites instead. Let your buyer persona work for you.
Don’t try to do it all yourself. Graphic designers, photographers, video editors and writers on your team can adapt your content for various platforms.

I saved the best pro tip for last…

You can always hire a virtual team of professionals to create and manage the content for you. We’d be glad to help. Schedule a free consultation today.

Generate Qualified Leads From Your Website

by Nicole Munoz

What would you do if you had a sales rep that month after month took a salary from your company yet week after week after week… they did not generate one single sale? What if this had been going on for years? What if not only were they not generating any sales, they were not even generating any leads? What would you do?

Of course you would fire them! Without a doubt!

The primary purpose of a sales rep is to generate sales and at the very least to generate some leads!

Yet every month, we pay hosting fees, website maintenance fees, software fees, and much more, to maintain a website whose sole job is to generate sales… yet we do nothing when the website fails to perform.

Is it time to fire your website? When was the last time your website generated a sale? A lead?

Sales is all about numbers. If we know that our closing rate or conversion rate is 5% then we can know that we need a specific number of leads to generate a target revenue.

For example, if you have a product that sells for $100 and you want to generate a monthly revenue of $10,000 then you know that you need to sell 100 units to achieve your revenue goal. If you know that you can close 5% of the leads, then you know that you will need 2000 qualified leads to be able to close 100 new customers. This math helps you to determine where you need to focus your efforts to reach your target sales goals.

If you know you need a minimum of 2000 qualified leads per month and your website is only generating 100, that that is the first place to focus your efforts.

So how can you improve your website to capture more leads?

When I work with my coaching clients, one of the first things we do in our coaching calls is to take a look at the website and do a series of 5 minute checks on the basics. Here are some of the questions I usually ask:

Site Review

Is the site visually pleasing?
Is there a clear call to action?
Is there a web form to capture email addresses?
Are there credibility symbols above the fold?
Are there testimonials?
Does the site guide the user to the next step?
Can you easily answer this question: What action do you want them to take?
Does the site allow people to self select different areas of the site based on different market segments?
Is the site converting visitors to leads and leads to sales? Is the conversion rate at least 5%?
If I send more traffic to this page will I get more sales?

SEO Site Review

If your site passes the initial Site Review, the next step is to review your site for search engine optimization factors. If you want your site to rank high in the search engines, you will need to have an SEO friendly site.

Does the site have good SEO friendly title tags?
Does the site have well written description tags? (Benefits plus call to action)
Is the url structure of the site static and seo friendly?
Are all pages on the site easy to find and easy to navigate to?
Is there a blog?
Is it linked to Google+?
Are there social media share buttons on the site and the blog?
Is there duplicate content on the site? (Copyscape)
Has the site been penalized for bad links? (Google Analytics / Penguin Analysis)
Is the site using keywords correctly through the site?

Blogging Review

The next step is to review your blog! Ask yourself these questions:

When was the last time the blog was updated?
Are the blog posts written for the readers or are they articles posing as blog posts.
Are people commenting on the blog posts.
Is the blog the central hub for all content creation?
Are there share buttons on each blog post?
Is the time on site greater than 2 minutes?
Is the bounce rate lower than 55%?
Is the click through rate to other pages at least 2?
Has the site been verified in Google+?

Social Media Review

Social Media is an integral part of an online marketing strategy. To be able to promote the blog posts that are being written, you must establish an online presence with social media. In the past, you could get top ranking in the search engines with just “link building”. This is no longer the case. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your social media presence:

Does you have a Facebook Fan page, Twitter page, Google+ Page, and LinkedIn Page for their company?
Are your social media accounts well designed with graphics?
When was the last time you updated each of your social media accounts?
What is your Klout score or Kred score?
Are you engaging your market online or are you just talking to them?

Local SEO Review

Do you have a brick and mortar business? Do you have a physical location customers can make purchases at?

Are you on Google Local?
Are you on Yelp?
Do you have a Google Map on your website Contact Us page?
Are you optimizing for Google Local terms? (Geo-modified keywords)
Do you have a system for getting reviews?
Are your public citations SEO optimized and optimized for conversion?

We have actually created a guide called the 7 Step Gap Guide where not only do I map out the above questions, but also explain how you can work with my company, Start Ranking Now, Inc. to close the gaps!

Subscribe to our Newsletter and Download the 7 Step Gap Guide Now!